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Wednesday, 20 July 2016

Is ideological flexibility a political virtue?

One of the criticisms that has been levelled at Jeremy Corbyn by supporters of the Labour Party coup plotters is that he is "ideologically inflexible". Somehow there are people out there who consider it some kind of political failing that Corbyn has consistently stuck with the left-wing anti-warmongering principles which led to him vote against the New Labour whip on numerous occasions.

As far as some people are concerned, having principles and sticking by them is some kind of political crime, therefore, it follows that in their minds, ideological flexibility must be a political virtue.

None of that seems to bother the Anyone But Corbyn camp, who are now throwing their weight behind the ideologically flexible Owen Smith as their candidate to overthrow their ideologically inflexible party leader.

Owen Smith is trying to present himself as the "soft-left" unity candidate, but investigations into his background and voting record show that if he is posturing as left-wing now, it's only because he's smart enough to realise that he can't possibly win over the Labour Party membership on a toxic and outdated centre-right Blairite platform. Owen Smith can only rebrand himself like this because he has the ideological flexibility to jettison his past principles in favour of more left-wing positions that he knows that he needs to project in order to have even the remotest chance of winning the Labour leadership election.

Another example of Smith's ideological flexibility is the way he has gone from championing right-wing New Labour policies like PFI and academy schools to admitting that, like their pro-privatisation "choice" agenda in the NHS, they were "mistakes". Whether he is sincere in this conversion away from right-wing Blairite policies, or simply posturing as a left-winger to win the Labour leadership election before flexing back to the kind of economically right-wing policies favoured by the Westminster establishment club is anyone's guess.

Perhaps the most telling example of Smith's ideological flexibility came in the few days after the EU referendum result came in. On June 24th he slammed David Cameron for resigning, calling it "petulant, rash and selfish" before complaining that the national interest was being "sacrificed on the altar of Tory party politics and individual Tories' self-interest".

In conclusion, the problem with Owen Smith's ideological flexibility is that it makes it awfully difficult to ever trust what he's saying. He's actually talking some good sense, and he's clearly nowhere near as an appalling candidate for leadership as Angela Eagle was, but how is it possible to believe that what he says is the truth, rather than a cynical attempt to win the Labour leadership by posing as a left-winger, before switching back to the Westminster establishment approved right-wing economic orthodoxy he used to stand for once he's got what he wants?

The problem with ideologically flexible showmen like Tony Blair and David Cameron is that they'll show you whatever they think you want in order to trick you into voting for them, then they'll do whatever the hell they like once they get into power. It's impossible to tell whether Owen Smith would ever end up being as brazenly dishonest as those two, but one thing is for sure, he's already proven that he has the necessary ideological flexibility.

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